


Fathers and Friends and Familes

by kavkakat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Trans, Asexual Character, Asexual!Lucy Skywalker, Gen, trans!Ahsoka headcanons, trans!Luke aka Lucy Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2266509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kavkakat/pseuds/kavkakat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy Skywalker realizes after Bespin that there's a lot that she doesn't know about being a Jedi, even after training with both Obi-Wan and Yoda. Thankfully, Ahsoka Tano is willing to step in and help.<br/>They realize they have more in common than either of them knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Friends and Familes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malcolmiavellian](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=malcolmiavellian).



> This work came about by joining three things.  
> First, Alexandra and I talking about our trans!Ahsoka headcanons waaaay back when we were both on like season 2 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  
> Second, I read a post a few weeks ago about having trans!headcanons instead of genderbending, and that lead to all of my trans!Lucy Skywalker headcanons.  
> Third, I NEEDED a story where Luke met Ahsoka between Episodes V and VI and Ahsoka trained her and talked about Anakin with her. (There is such a level up in Luke's abilities between those movies, it's incredible.)  
> So, this is what came out of that.

See, the thing about the Lars moisture farm is that they take enough money in to keep afloat moderately comfortably, but not enough to pay for biological adjustments. Lucy tries not to be resentful, but patience has never been her strong suit, and there are days when she wants to smash her small mirror because that’s not her body in it.

But on the best days, she can put on a large, draped shirt cinched tight around her waist with a utility belt and be completely happy. She goes out with her friends and works on restoring racers when she doesn’t have chores to do, and she’s forever looking at the stars.

Patience has never been her strong suit.

But the thing about being a hero in the Rebel Alliance for destroying a Death Star? The moment she mentioned to Leia that she wanted biological adjustments, there were immediately doctors volunteering to perform the procedures for free.

(For free.)

The complete strangeness of the situation doesn’t stop Lucy from jumping at the chance. She has spent 20 years in this body and, while she doesn’t necessarily hate it, she wants her own body. Lucy Skywalker’s body, not Anakin Skywalker II’s body.

It’s not easy to arrange a surgical appointment around the constant movements of being involved in a military rebellion against the Galactic Empire, but Pala Idrall, Lucy’s surgeon, is well acquainted with military dealings, since she trained as a surgeon back during the Clone Wars. Eventually, during a week of leave Lucy thought would never come, Pala Idrall puts her under with a smile and when she wakes up she has breasts and doesn’t have a penis.

She had talked with Pala Idrall about further restructuring to give her larger hips, or a more slender jawline, but she doesn’t regret turning that down. She’s used to her hips and her jawline. She still cinches her belt tight around her waist, but she replaces her large, draping shirts with tighter ones so when she looks down she can see the body she always wanted.

After twenty years of waiting, she feels like she’s owed it to celebrate.

***

After Bespin, Lucy knows how very unskilled as a Jedi she is. She’s skilled enough to take on most people, but Yoda said she was destined to take on the Emperor, to take on her fa - Vader, and she knows that she can’t do that. Not yet.

This is how she’s found herself on a tiny little moon orbiting the Outer Rim planet Khaar, getting her ass kicked by a middle-aged Togruta with twin lightsabers. Ahsoka Tano, she calls herself, and she wields the lightsabers like they’re extensions of herself, like a true Jedi, even though she says she’s not.

Lucy isn’t sure she believes her, but in any case this Ahsoka Tano knows more about lightsabers than she does, and she’s impatient to learn.

Ahsoka starts her off with the basics, the ones Ben taught her back before she’d ever even heard of a Death Star, and she has to breathe deep and just go with it, because she doesn’t think Ahsoka will take he protests any better than Yoda ever did. (At least Yoda didn’t outright laugh at her failures, the way Ahsoka does when she falls on her face and gets stung in the ass, although that only happened once.)

When Lucy proves herself to Ahsoka’s satisfaction, they move on to harder drills. Lucy expects Force drills, like the ones Yoda made her do, but Ahsoka moves her on to a practice lightsaber. Or, really, a stick of wood carved in the shape of a lightsaber, but Ahsoka mentions once that in the Jedi Temple they practiced with real practice lightsabers, with an electromagnetic field around the blade with they didn’t kill each other.

(That’s one of the times that Lucy really doesn’t believe Ahsoka when she says that she’s not a Jedi.)

Lucy learns quick. It feels like waking up in her new body, learning how to fight with a lightsaber. She loves her lightsaber, and feels a rush of joy when she masters another move. She’s proud of herself.

She thinks Ahsoka is, too.

***

Ben Kenobi never misgenders Lucy, even before she tells her aunt and uncle or any of her friends. He calls her Anakin, but he also refers to her as a girl, and that’s what matters. It makes her feel warm inside, like there’s this spark of light within her ready to catch fire, and that’s what prompts her to chose the name Lucy when she comes out to everyone else.

For a moment, he looks agonized when she first tells him her name (Lucy Skywalker, it rolls off her tongue like hot sugar, perfect and whole and completely her), but he never calls her Anakin again, and she is infinitely grateful to him.

Now she knows that that moment of agony was - Anakin was the name of her father.

Ben’s best friend.

Anakin Skywalker.

Darth Vader.

Lucy’s always loved her name, her proper name, but now she’s vindictively glad that she changed her name, because she’s not sure if she could live with being named Anakin and knowing that her fa - the man she was named after became Darth Vader. And cut her hand off.

Her new hand looks like her old one, but sometimes she imagines that she can feel the difference as well as knowing it, like the feelings she gets from it aren’t as real as the ones she gets from her (human) left hand.

She knows that she’s lucky to have come this far in the Rebellion with mostly superficial injuries, but she’s not sure she can forgive Anakin Skywalker for becoming Darth Vader and taking so much from her.

A hand.

A lightsaber.

A father.

She’s grimly pleased that she rejected her first name before he could take that from her as well.

***

Lucy was on the run from Imperial Troops that had orders to apprehend, not kill (because jumping off a bridge to her death rather than surrendering must obviously mean something different to Darth Vader than it did to her), when she landed on the fourth moon around Khaar in the hopes of waiting them out before getting back to the Alliance Fleet.

Unfortunately, the Troopers were better than she expected at tracking her, and now she’s hiding behind an outcropping of rock that’s slowly being chipped away by Imperial blaster fire.

She’s almost out of charge and is about to leap out with her lightsaber drawn when there’s the crackle of another lightsaber igniting (and she swears her heart stops in terror that it’s Darth Vader) and then the blaster fire stops. She waits a minute, then holsters her blaster, ignites her lightsaber, and steps out to face the new fighter.

There’s a female Togruta standing in the middle of a regiment of dead Stormtroopers, twin green lightsabers gripped in both hands. Her skin is orange and her head-tails and montrals are white and blue, and she wears an akul-tooth headdress. Lucy thinks she might be a Jedi, but she’s dressed like a bounty hunter, in sturdy leather and blast armor, and Lucy doesn’t put down her lightsaber yet. After a moment, the Togruta looks up.

“So you’re the new Jedi,” she says. She puts out her lightsabers and attaches them to her belt, one on each side of her waist. She’s slender, like Lucy, with wide shoulders and slim hips, and she searches the soldiers for supplies - charges, mainly, and some food packages, Lucy sees - like she’s done it a thousand times before.

“Are you one?” Lucy asks. “A Jedi, I mean?” She bites her lip, because she feels foolish and silly. She remembers that her lightsaber is still ignited, and she wants to put it away, because the Togruta did, but she reminds herself not to be too trusting, no matter what the Force says.

The other woman pauses a moment, straightens, and looks right at Lucy. She opens her mouth, hesitates, and then says, “No. I’m not.” She crosses over to Lucy and holds out her hand to shake. “I’m Ahsoka Tano.”

Now Lucy does put away her lightsaber and takes Ahsoka’s hand. “Lucy Skywalker.”

Ahsoka snorts. “I know who you are.” And then:

“I.. knew your father.”

***

When Lucy first leaves Tatooine with Han on the Millenium Falcon, chased out by blaster fire and Imperial troops, she’s too high on adrenaline to be nervous.

Later, though, when they’re safely in hyperspace and everyone is just sitting around the cabin on the way to Alderaan, Lucy doesn’t know what to do with herself. She folds her arms in front of her, she crosses her legs, she sits down, she stands up and paces. She watches Han and Chewbacca, wondering if they know about her, if they care about her, if she should tell them? What exactly is the protocol for interacting with a smuggler that just saved her ass from Stormtroopers?

Tatooine was an Outer Rim planet. It was a bit cruel, and Lucy had a very small circle of acquaintances. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, and her gender preferences had definitely been on the gossip list more than once.

Lucy wonders now if everywhere will be like Tatooine or if, out here in the great black vastness of space, she’s just one more woman, no matter what name she was given at birth or what genitals she has.

The situation is tested just before they reach Alderaan, when Lucy is stripping in her bunk after Jedi training with Ben, and Han walks in to tell her they’re about to reach the planet.

Lucy is bared to the waist, and Han just kind of stops in the doorway, brow furrowed a bit. Lucy lunges for her shirt and covers herself up again, cinching her belt tight around her waist before looking up again.

Han’s still standing there, but he doesn’t look as confused. “You said your name was Lucy, right?” he asks finally.

“Yeah,” Lucy says. “Do you have a problem with it?”

Han blinks like it just occurred to him that he might have a problem with a trans woman, shrugs a little, and says, “Nah. Just came to tell you we’re getting close to Alderaan. Should be there in about thirty minutes, so you might not want to get too comfy here.”

Then he leaves.

And that’s it.

She comes out of her cabin waiting for the other foot to drop, but then Alderaan is destroyed and they’re on the Death Star rescuing Leia and she’s too caught up to remember to worry about it anymore.

***

As Lucy trains more and more with Ahsoka, the older woman opens up more and more. She’s mischievous, she loves to laugh, she’s more hopeful about the future than any other person Lucy has ever met before.

While Ahsoka tip-toes around where she got her Jedi training (she denies that she’s a Jedi now, but she knows a surprising amount about life at the Jedi Temple before the Empire, and just because she’s not a Jedi now doesn’t mean she never ever was one), she is very free with stories about her upbringing and her friendship with Anakin Skywalker.

The first time Ahsoka mentions Anakin Skywalker, after their first meeting, it’s over supper after a long training session, and Lucy is tired enough to be angry, so she says abruptly, “You mean Darth Vader.”

And Ahsoka pauses and says slowly, “No, I actually mean Anakin Skywalker.”

Lucy folds her arms and looks away. “But he became Vader, didn’t he? So why don’t we just call him what he is.”

“Because the man I knew and loved is not Vader,” Ahsoka says.

“But he is!” Lucy cries. She throws up her hands. “My father, the man I have looked up to my entire life, he’s a monster! And you know what’s worse? You and Ben, it’s like you’re in denial of it!” she snarls. “You know what Ben told me?”

Ahsoka looks down, like she knows where this is going, but Lucy continues anyway.

“Ben said that Darth Vader killed my father,” she spits, because she’s not over that, not by a long shot. “At least that was a truth I could live with. My father, the brave and noble hero, killed by the Emperor’s executor.”

“Life isn’t that simple.” Ahsoka’s words are bitter, just as bitter as Lucy’s, and that alone is enough to stop Lucy in her tracks.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Ahsoka says, and something in her eyes tells Lucy not to say something sarcastic. “I wanted to be one all my life. You… have probably guessed that I was raised in the Jedi Temple. I was your father’s Padawan learner. I spent nearly all of the Clone Wars at his side, learning from him - not only how to be a good Jedi, but how to be a good person.”

Ahsoka stands up and starts clearing away the supper dishes. “There was… I had a friend, another Padawan, but she wasn’t as content with the Jedi as I was. She framed me for several murders. Anakin was the only one to help me - the Jedi Council expelled me from the order, gave me to the Republic for crimes I didn’t commit. And Anakin found my friend, and cleared my name, and he begged me to come back to the order.”

Lucy helps her with the dishes, pressing her shoulder against Ahsoka’s as her eyes close in remembrance.

“I almost did,” Ahsoka says, so quiet Lucy can barely hear her. “I almost came back to the Order. For my master. For Anakin. But I couldn’t. If the Council didn't trust me as a Jedi, how could I trust them, or trust myself as a Jedi?

“So, yes, Lucy, your father, Anakin Skywalker, was a General in the Army of the Republic, and a Jedi master, and he saved lives,” Ahsoka finishes.

Lucy nods, feeling thoroughly chastised, even if she’s not quite ready to associate the Darth Vader she met on Bespin with the Anakin Skywalker who saved Ahsoka’s life.

***

Lucy never protests when Ahsoka talks about Anakin after that, or life in the Temple, or any of it.

Life in the Jedi Temple sounds like a fairy tale. All the Jedi that there must have been, to fill up such a huge complex - it stuns Lucy, and she soaks it up like a sponge. Training lightsabers, the archives, masters training all the younglings in the creche - anything Ahsoka will talk about.

It doesn’t slip into conversation deliberately, but one day Ahsoka mentions transitioning in the Temple, and Lucy just kind of - grabs onto it. It’s understanding, of course, wanting to know more about it, but it’s also a very personal issue. Thankfully, Ahsoka understands.

“A body is a channel for the Force,” Ahsoka explains, “And it’s important to take care of our bodies. If a Jedi feels a disconnect with their body, they cannot fully use the Force. Such matters were therefore taken care of very early on in life, as early as possible.”

“And no one ever… thought it was strange?” Lucy presses, thinking of all the people back on Tatooine who would slip up and call her Anakin, or refuse to call her Lucy in the first place.

Ahsoka shrugs. “I wasn’t the only trans Jedi. Some people, like me, needed the surgery to feel like themselves. Others were comfortable in the bodies they were born with. Either way, it didn’t matter. Jedi see the inner being as more important than the outer. Bodies are important - they are our weapons, beyond our lightsabers - but they are not who we truly are, just outward manifestations of our inner self.” She smiles. “Or something like that, it’s been a while since I got a lecture in this.”

Lucy can barely imagine it. Working with the Alliance has helped, surrounding her with people who see her as Lucy Skywalker, Commander and Jedi Knight in training, but nineteen years of people “mistaking” her for a boy, or “slipping up” and calling her Anakin are hard to forget.

“Of course, just because the Temple was accepting didn’t mean everywhere else was,” Ahsoka continues. “There were plenty of people who refused to work with me once they found out, for whatever reason, that I’m trans. Actually” - and here she outright grins - “when I was assigned to your father as a Padawan, I was terrified that he wouldn’t accept me for who I was. I don’t know what I was thinking - Anakin wouldn’t have gotten very far as a Jedi if he was so prejudiced - but  I knew he had been raised outside the Temple, and but then I was well aware of prejudices existing outside the Temple.”

After a moment, Lucy realizes that Ahsoka isn’t going to continue telling her story, and for once, Lucy feels - well, she really needs to know how her father accepted Ahsoka. How he might have accepted her, if he hadn’t turned to the Dark Side. So she prompts: “And what did he do?”

Ahsoka smiles at her. “He sat me down one day after dealing with some pirates and demanded to know what I was so terrified about, because it certainly wasn’t fighting pirates. I - well, it took some time before he understood what I was trying to say. And when I finally told him that I was trans, he sat so still and silent that I thought he was going to walk out on me.” She laughs. “And then - and I’ll always remember this - he squinted and demanded why, by the Force, I thought he didn’t know about that, or why he would care.”

Lucy’s entranced, leaning forward on her elbows. This is better than anything she ever imagined, and it was real.

“The Temple was kind of like a small town, in a way - everyone knew everyone else, even if it was just by name,” Ahsoka explains. “Back when I transitioned, the news made its way through the Temple very quickly, but it had been years since then, and I’d never met Anakin until later on.” She looks down, still smiling a bit. “Really, it was a silly mistake to make.”

Lucy reaches forward and grabs her hand, because she would have made the same mistake. “You couldn’t have known.”

Ahsoka looks up and says, “That was the day I decided that, no matter what happens, I would always love Anakin Skywalker.”

***

Leia is larger than life, the first time Lucy sees her in a holding cell on the Death Star. She’s in full Princess mode, snapping out orders and insulting Han and Chewbacca, and so completely beautiful that Lucy can barely believe it.

Once the action is over, and they’ve escorted Leia back to the Rebel bases on Yavin, Lucy feels shy around her. Large and misshapen and graceless, tripping over her words and blushing at the hint of Leia. Han thinks Lucy has a crush on the Princess, and swings from being sharp and sarcastic about it to encouraging her with a grin.

Leia, thank the Force, very rarely gets impatient with Lucy. And, once Lucy gets her surgery, she feels less ugly around her, and that helps a lot. For a while, she thinks that she’s in love with Leia, but she never does anything about it, and Leia falls in love with Han instead.

(Of course, once Lucy realizes that she and Leia are sisters, she’s very glad that they only ever kissed the once, and that only to make Han jealous.)

After the fall of the Empire, Lucy has more time to think about romance. Love is complicated, she thinks. Simple and complicated all at the same time. Ahsoka told her that Jedi were forbidden from forming attachments, but Lucy doesn’t think she could ever stop herself from loving Leia, or Han, or Chewbacca, or any of her other friends in the Rebel Alliance. The people who accept her wholly and have her back, no matter what.

She doesn’t see what’s so wrong with loving them.

But she also doesn’t see the point of kissing any of them. She doesn’t understand what drives Leia to kiss Han casually, relaxing into the kiss like no one is watching. (No one should be watching, and Lucy typically looks away very quickly.) She’s kissed people before (Leia among them), but it never felt anything more than wet and slightly awkward.

So there’s a time there when she thinks that maybe she’s broken somewhere deep within her, and maybe she’ll fall to the Dark Side because of it, because everyone is starting to ask her if she’s attracted to anyone, and she doesn’t know what that even feels like. It’s only through nights and nights of meditation that she decides that, as long as she does love people, it doesn't matter how that love shows itself, and she'll be fine.

Even if she doesn’t want to have sex with anyone. Ever.

(Kissing seems awkward enough - imagine adding all those other fluids into the mix!)

***

Ahsoka loves Anakin like a brother, or a father, or a very close friend. It’s very clear to Lucy that when she talks about Anakin and love, it’s strictly platonic. (She knows that much about love, at least.)

It’s also very clear that Ahsoka refuses to believe that Anakin Skywalker is truly dead, like Ben believed. She separates Anakin from Darth Vader in her mind, but she believes Anakin is still alive somewhere inside the Sith.

Maybe that’s the reason, more than anything else, that Lucy can’t bring herself to kill Vader in front of the Emperor. Ahsoka told her stories and stories and stories about this man - about Anakin Skywalker, her father - and she can no longer kill him. Not when there’s a chance that Anakin is still under all that armor.

So she holsters her lightsaber and tells the Emperor to shove it, and is tortured for it.

But.

Ahsoka was right, she thinks to herself as she drags her father’s body up into her ship as the Death Star II is destroyed around them. Anakin Skywalker was still there, alive and trapped under the armor of Darth Vader. And she’s still a bit conflicted about him, but Lucy is pretty sure she’s proud of Anakin Skywalker for killing the Emperor. For taking the chance she gave him to make things right.

So she burns his body when he dies in her arms, in the Jedi way, and she mourns him like a father.

One day, several months after the Emperor was killed, and she’s running ragged with the rest of the Rebels to restore order to the galaxy, she gets a comm message from a backwater planet. The Togruta on the message is smiling - grinning, really - and says only three words:

“Told you so.”

And, yeah, really, she did.

Lucy saves the message, and the next time she’s in the Outer Rim she stops by Khaar and has dinner with an old friend and maybe they talk about her father.

**Author's Note:**

> Some closing notes:  
> While I am asexual (and Lucy's feelings about romantic relationships are really based off my own), I am not trans.  
> If anything in this work is offensive, please tell me so I can fix it.


End file.
